Forty Under 40

Tom Hileman, 37

Managing partner,
Hileman Enterprises LLC

Sometimes father does indeed know best. Technology consulting firm Hileman Enterprises LLC of Cleveland has been growing straight through the recession, partly because of the broad base of knowledge owner Tom Hileman gained while working several positions in the IT industry over the past 14 years.

Seems the 37-year-old heeded a piece of advice he received years ago from his dad, an accountant for an insurance company in Mr. Hileman's hometown of Celina, Ohio.

That notion began influencing Mr. Hileman's career choices from the moment he took his first job out of college in 1995, when he became a consultant with Ernst & Young's Cleveland office.

He chose the position over others partly because of the company's training program and the caliber of its work force.

“I wanted to be around as many exceptional people as I could to learn as much as I could,” he said.

That position gave him a deeper knowledge of technology management consulting, but he gained entrepreneurial skills in the late-1990s while expanding to 18 people the once-small software practice at technology consulting firm Berish & Associates of Broadview Heights.

He learned a lot about business processes from 1999 to 2000, when he led product development for quality control software provider IQS Inc. of Rocky River, and he picked up some marketing-related experience from 2001 to 2003, while serving as chief technology officer at Cleveland-based digital marketing firm Optiem.

In between those two positions, however, he spent about a year with FutureNext Consulting Inc. — which in some ways taught him how not to run a business.

The McLean, Va.-based company had acquired several IT services companies, including Cleveland's Vantage One Communications Group, during the dot-com boom. That bulk hurt the company during the subsequent dot-com bust, forcing it to file for bankruptcy. Mr. Hileman was laid off in September 2001.

Among other things, that experience taught Mr. Hileman to keep Hileman Enterprises lean. For instance, the 3-year-old firm employs a handful of contractors to complement his full-time staff of 10. Giving the contractors less work when business is slow lets him save money and serves as a buffer against the need to lay off staff.

“Sometimes you learn a lot more from the pain than the success in life,” he said.

Mr. Hileman lives in Avon with his wife, Renee, and their children, Halley, 11, and Bryce, 9. He enjoys volunteering for his children's school activities and coaching Bryce's soccer team.